Packing in The WordPress Plugins

It's Episode 560 and we have plugins for Removing Foot Credit, Packing Slips, Counting Halloween, Button 4 Download, Cutting Lights, Crow's Menu… and ClassicPress Options. It's all coming up on WordPress Plugins A-Z!

Remove Footer Credit, PDF Invoices & Packing Slips, Halloween Countdown Widget, Download Button for Elementor, Cut The Lights, Crow's Nest Menu Navigation……. and ClassicPress options on Episode 560.

John's Intro:

This is a value for value show and I look forward to everyone providing some value back.

Before I get started, you will want to hang around to the end of the show for our Q & A segment with Amber…. and to those listening on the podcast, you may want to check out the YouTube version which has some great discussions before the show starts…

Amber's Rant:

This is #20 of 52 episodes for 2022!

I'm a day late but: MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU!! Totally wore one of my many Star Wars shirts yesterday – it got a bunch of baking stuff on it, but it served its purpose.

Here on the Wet Coast, we have rain… again… though it IS getting warmer! We can open our windows and leave them open for longer than half an hour now! Tis very exciting. Remember to stay away from the socials, get some sunshine if it's showing its face in your area, maybe go out and play some Frisbee or something! Human interaction and exercise are a great pairing for peace within the brain meats!

Winter is leaving… Summer is coming…
(Instead of ‘winter is coming' – for those who don't get the reference like my partner, it's from Game of Thrones)

We have some news from the world of WordPress for you today as well as some great plugins.

News this week:

WordPress Vulnerability Report – May 4, 2022 (May the 4th be with you!) – There are a few plugins to think about this week, the ones I recognize most easily are: WP Subscribe, WP Invoice, Vertical scroll recent post, Turn off all comments, Wp Contacts manager, Domain Replace, and Hermit. Actually I don't think I do recognize Hermit – though I like the name. Now I want to go and check it out – I'll wait to see if it gets fixed though.

Remember to check the list of fixes for this week as well, see if any plugins you have deactivated are on the list, and be sure to update!

James Kemp acquires ReplyBox – ReplyBox is a privacy-focused comment system originally launched in 2018. It seems they were having some issues getting a strong foothold in the WordPress ecosystem, so Kemp offered to buy it. If any of our listeners currently use this, it doesn't seem like they are planning on changing the name, though Kemp is currently working on a few upgrades to release that include a lot of requests from users. If I hear about a name change or anything, I will let you know!

SpinupWP launches CLI Tool and External Database Support – SpinupWP is a cloud-based WordPress server control panel from Delicious Brain – who decided to celebrate their 4th birthday by launching one of the most frequently requested features: a command-line interface to manage servers and sites from the terminal! They have also released PHP SDK, offering you multiple options to manage your sites and servers! Totally awesome! This article goes through an interview with Brad Touesnard, founder and CEO of Delicious Brains, and they talk about the new features in depth – also where they got the idea for SpinupWP!

Gutenberg Hub launches an Online Page Builder App using WordPress Patterns – This is to be an interface that allows users to piece together patterns to build entire pages – unlink the block editor itself, users won't be able to edit the content itself though. Instead, they will have the power to mix and match patterns, copy the block code, and paste it into the editor on their WordPress install. This is currently live on Gutenberg Hub, though it is still in the concept phase – if you go and check this out, be aware that it will keep changing for a bit!

Researchers disclose 10-year-old vulnerabilities in Avast and AVG Antivirus – “These vulnerabilities allow attacker to escalate privileges, enabling them to disable security products, overwrite system components, corrupt the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded.” Not cool. If you use Avast or AVG Antivirus, be sure to give this article a read so you understand what's going on.

Is it ethical to use AI-generated content without crediting the machine? – This is a very interesting question that this article dives into. The example here is about an algorithm recently developed that generates original reviews for wines and beers… even though computers can't taste booze… It's an interesting article, and does bring home a few good points.

The extras – for even more extra news, check out our Facebook, or Twitter page!

This is the extra news stuff that someone out there might find interesting. To read more, you can head on over to the show notes or newsletter and check it out! If you find something to add for next show, send me a link at amber@wppro.ca

The importance of defining Secure Code – Only about 29% of the coders out there say that they are able to prioritize writing code free of vulnerabilities, with the priority instead on speed and releasing the product. A lot of organizations the coders say that the ones in charge don't really even have a clear idea of constitutes secure code, and since the greenhorns are entering into the tech world where writing code free of vulnerabilities is not a priority, they are learning to pay attention to time and release over removal of vulnerabilities with a ‘I'll patch it on the next release' kind of mentality. This is a great article, worth giving a read.

What's the transformer machine learning model? And why should you care? – Essentially, this is a learning model based on how the human brain learns. Think of a giant spider web of information, now condense it the lines of web until it looks solid – that is the transformer machine learning model. This model is mainly used for advanced applications in natural language processing. Google uses it to enhance its search engine results, and OpenAI is using it to create things like their famous GPT-2 and GPT-3 models. This article goes into depth explaining what this is and how it works and how it is being utilized and advanced.

Firefox version 100 is here – is it finally time to switch from Google Chrome? – Firefox has some new features for us! Improved picture in picture mode – this version supports sub titles and captions! Apple doesn't do that yet I hear – Firefox has also proven to be less of a burden on memory allowing sites to load faster. Chrome users are talking about the switch! Version 100 seems to be the magic number!

Is the SEO Industry dying? – Lately, the voices out there talking about SEO being on its last leg seem to be getting louder – voices from both inside and outside of the SEO community are beginning to rise up! There are a lot of things that are weakening the SEO industry, though there are things that are keeping the SEO community strong too! Like Google's constant updates, the constant use of search engines, new audiences, and don't forget that transformations are slow! This article goes through the good, the bad, and the ugly on the SEO industry's chances, as well as all the reasons to be optimistic that SEO is going nowhere!

Watch this giant Japanese robot fix railways (and pray it doesn't turn on us) – I feel like I am watching a Transformer fix the city after a battle! Pretty awesome really.

Heroku admits to customer database hack after OAuth token theft – On May 4th, Heroku forced a password change that revoked all token permissions – they didn't tell the customers why at first, though today they announced that this was due to stolen GitHub integration OAth tokens from last month. Read on to find out more about this!

F5 warns of critical BIT-IP RCE bug allowing device takeover – F5 is advising that there is a flaw that may allow unauthenticated attackers with network access to execute arbitrary system commands, perform file actions, and disable services on BIG-IP. If this is something you use, be sure to check this article out so that you can get the full scoop of what is going on.

Cisco fixes NFVIS bugs that help gain root and hijack hosts – Cisco has addressed several security flaws found in the Enterprise NFV Infrastructure Software (NFVIS) – a system that helps virtualize network services for easier management of virtual network functions (VNF's). There are two of them, and currently there is no proof of concept exploit code and no ongoing exploitation in the wild – though do be aware.

Twitter finally copies an Instagram feature it should have had ages ago – This would be the new feature called ‘circle'. This function will let you tweet stuff out to a restricted audience of 150 people. Basically like the ‘close friends' feature on Instagram.

Instagram: Please don't copy TikToks to our TikTok copycat – Instagram this week announced several changes to its platform – most notably, it has tweaked its ranking algorithm to highlight original content above reshared content. So… stop sharing TikTok and Twitter posts from other people and come up with your own stuff!

Matt's Famous Quotes
https://www.idrlabs.com/quotes/matt-mullenweg.php

The hall of shame via Automattic:
transparency.automattic.com/tag/hall-of-shame/

This show won't work without YOU the Producers as this is a Value for Value kind of show!

If you find value in our show, toss some value back! Help keep the show going so we can keep on plugging!

Show Producers

This is where we like to take the time to thank everyone who supports the show!

This weeks show Artwork is by:

Greg's Graphics (Greg Holdsworth) — https://gregsgraphics.com

You can Submit Artwork yourself by going to https://wppluginsatoz.com/artwork/

You can also check out all the art work yourself by going to https://wppluginsatoz.com/show-art-submitted/

Show Executive Producer/'s up on the stage this week:

Nobody this week, maybe next week!

Executive Producers are the ones coming in with $50.00 or more in donations. You can also send along a note that will be read out live on the show! You can just say hi, or you can send in your elevator speech and get a little self promotion while donating to a good cause!

Back Room Producers hanging-out in the Lounge:

Back Room Producers play a big part in keeping this show going! Some of these producers are the anonymous benefactors coming in with donations under $50.00.

Our best known Back Room Producers are those who help us out with our contests, artwork, and site organization!

Some of our Back Room Producers help out the show by sending us in notes, questions, plugin suggestions, and plugin reviews.

Other Back Room Producers help out the show by sending in licenses for the contests.

Our least visible Back Room Producers help out the show by hiring us! This is as good as donating, plus we get the added bonus of more experience to bring to our listeners here on the show!

A big thank you to all the Producers out there, we couldn't do this show without you!

Support the show with your Time, Talent, or Treasure:

Time Support:

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Spread the word about WP Plugins A to Z through your social media, YouTube – wherever you find yourself! Get on out there to round them up and rope them all in, then belly up to the bar and enjoy with your catch of the day while we do our best to bring you the latest and greatest of plugins and news with a laugh!

You can also catch us live on our YouTube Channel every Thursday at 11 AM PDT – show up by 10:45 AM PDT to catch our pre-stream! Really quite entertaining most days as we fiddle with the dials and knobs to chase away the gremlins that have moved in since the week before.

Send us in articles, news, or general WordPress information to share either here on the show or on the WP Plugins A to Z site. You can do this anonymously, or have your name attached – just let us know in the email. Articles and General WordPress information will land on the site, while News may land either here on the show, or on the site – or both!

Send us in plugin suggestions or reviews for the show. This can be a plugin you love or hate, your own write up, or just a recommendation for a plugin to review!

Random tasks that need doing. See a task that you'd like to take on? Shoot us an email and we can talk about it!

Talent Support:

Submit Artwork into WP Plugins Art Generator. LOVE seeing the creativity of all the artists out there! Submit your artwork to https://wppluginsatoz.com/artwork/

See somewhere that could use your talent? Shoot us an email and we can talk about it!

Treasure Support:

Donations to the show! Over $50.00 donations will earn you an Executive Producership where you can have your note read out on the show! Under $50.00 donations will earn you a place in our Back Room Producers Lounge!

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Something we haven't listed here? Shoot us an email and we can talk!

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WP Plugins A to Z
C/O John Overall
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Off we go into the meat and potatoes, Into the depths of plugin depravity…..

ClassicPress Options

ClassicPress DOES have a future – we just don't have the time to help ClassicPress get themselves out there right now.

As the ClassicPress World expands the number of ClassicPress specific plugins in their own repository we see them growing. There are a few plugins specifically for ClassicPress currently, and all the plugins for WordPress 4.9.9 work well.

If anyone out there is using ClassicPress and would like to send in some reviews or news, we will gladly add it into this section! You can do so anonymously or let the world know your name – we will respect your choice!

ClassicPress News:

No new updates this week

Check out the new ‘chats' in the forum
https://forums.classicpress.net/

WordPress does have a section devoted to plugins that are compatible with ClassicPress, check it out!
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/classicpress/

If you're looking to learn how to use ClassicPress check out the tutorials on their site.
https://www.classicpress.net/category/tutorials/

For some up to date news on ClassicPress check out the ClassicPress Blog.

ClassicPress Resources:

“Must Have” Plugins List
https://forums.classicpress.net/t/must-have-plugins-list/1163

You can check out the ClassicPress repository here https://directory.classicpress.net/plugins They now have 81 plugins (and counting!) available.

ClassicPress Information – The information that will keep, and help you on your way to understanding and using ClassicPress!

Find out more about ClassicPress 1.4.0 rc2 https://forums.classicpress.net/t/classicpress-1-4-0-rc2-release-notes/3785?fbclid=IwAR3wGK5IW8ssJ-XC4k7IiZMBtSjUTVN2pexk6ATCRvuMN-Fn-McOy-XJJv8

WordPress Plugins

Are you looking for some great newly released plugins? Check out this link:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/new/

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John's Plugin

Remove Footer Credit

https://wordpress.org/plugins/remove-footer-credit/

The Lowdown:

Looking for a nice easy way to change out that footer credit when using the default WordPress Theme. This is a plugin that helps make that job easier. Install activate it then change the text. This is a bit more specific than I though it would be though you have to put the exact text into it that you want to replace and then the replcement text.

Rating 4 Dragons.

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Amber's Plugin

Download Button for Elementor

https://wordpress.org/plugins/download-button-for-elementor/

The Lowdown:

This is an interesting case. Neither my dad nor I remember adding this plugin to our regular site, though one of us did, likely for testing reasons.

I have been having some issues with logging in for a bit, it has been taking up to 5 minutes to login to our sites dashboard for me – though I knew I would get to it whenever I ‘had time'. The other evening, I went to create a new page for the site, and when I loaded up Elementor, the menu on the left hand side wouldn't load. Kinda can't do anything without that menu option loading up in Elementor, so I started deactivating various ‘For Elementor' plugins.

Only took a few tries luckily, though once I deactivated Download Button for Elementor, the menu loaded no problem! On a hunch, I decided to try and log out and in – and wonders of wonders, no issue logging in! No lag, no ‘thinking circle', no need to refresh the page to get all the way into the site – it was all this one plugins doing.

Download Button for Elementor is a fantastic idea – though it does not seem to have the capability of playing nicely with Elementor, which is the whole reason this plugin was made – and it seems to not have the ability to play well with WordPress Login Credential pages.

This is not a plugin that is worth your time, avoid it.

Rating 1 Dragons

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John's Plugin

PDF Invoices & Packing Slips

https://wordpress.org/plugins/pdf-invoices-and-packing-slips/

The Lowdown:

If you're running a WooCommerce site and shipping products this may be a plugin for you. It allows you to simply create, print and email your invoices and packing slips.

Rating 4 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

Cut The Lights

https://wordpress.org/plugins/cut-the-lights/

The Lowdown:

I wasn't sure what to think when I first saw this since a lot of auto dark theme plugins are rather ugly in the colouring, and they make it hard to do things I find…

Though when I activated it and watched the dashboard go dark, I was pleasantly surprised! The auto setup is really quite a good choice in colours! Nothing was hard to read, they kept the important things standing out, though not painfully so. Also, they don't seem to have used pure black, more of a charcoal black – which is a lot easier on the eyes with other colours.

There are also 2 other colour themes you can choose from – coffee, and neon. I was expecting the neon to be rather 90's bright, but it was actually quite tame. Neon colours without the pain in the head.

And the best part? Once I activated ‘Cut The Lights', it only affected my account I was using at the time. The plugin still shows as ‘activated' in the other accounts, but the dark theme did not auto pop on! This has been an issue in the past for me since I tend to use dark themes a lot, though people I work with don't – so whenever I used a dark theme in the past I would have to either let everyone know how to turn off the dark mode, or I would just go into their accounts and do it for them.

This is WAY better!!

If another person desires the dark mode to pop on, they just need to go into the settings on the left hand side and choose one of the colour options.

Seriously loving this dark mode – ‘Cut The Lights' is now my replacement go to for saving my brainmeats!

Rating 5 Dragons

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John's Plugin

Halloween Countdown Widget

https://wordpress.org/plugins/halloween-countdown-widget/

The Lowdown:

Its never to early to start counting down the days until Halloween. This is a simple cute Halloween countdown widget you can place on your site.

Rating 5 Dragons

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Amber's Plugin

Crow's Nest menu Navigation

https://wordpress.org/plugins/crows-nest-menu-navigation/

The Lowdown:

This is a pretty cool plugin – it adds the ability for visitors using keyboard navigation on the site to use the arrow keys while in the menu. This way they don't have to tab it all the way through in order to get to the menu – just use left or right arrows to see what's in the menus, and up or down to go through the drop down to get to the desired item!

This does work if you do not have any drop downs, it will just be side to side navigation in that case.

There are visual instructions letting your visitors know you have this option for them that will pop up by default. You can adjust these instructions and how they appear via CSS in the settings of the plugin – you will find those under ‘Menu Setup' on your left hand side menu area.

Now, in order to set this up, you will have to put in the CSS code. You need to choose the Colour, Distance From Top, Primary Menu Items, Secondary Menu Items, Whole Menu, and Page Main Content.

If you don't fill in any of these, there will be nothing showing up – there are ‘General Instructions' and ‘Tips and Tricks' to help you get going, though if you are not familiar with CSS this will be a real learning curve for you.

This is a little niched in the sense that it is not general user friendly, but I honestly love this! Loads of fun playing around with all the options, also helps one to brush up on CSS input.

Rating 4 Dragons

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Random links for plugins

WordPress plugins crafted from love and experience
https://codeat.co/

Listener Feedback / Audio Clips

Feel Free sending in your thoughts to us – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly – we'll take them all!

Listener Questions

There's no such thing as a stupid question! Send your questions to us via email, Facebook, or our website!

There is no contest right now – we are just waiting on the worker bees to return with our next contest!

Be sure to stay tuned to find out what will be available next! If anyone out there would like to help our current worker bees, contact us. Many hands make light work and more contests!

Contests Powered by Simple Giveaways who kindly provides us with the premium version for our contests.

A BIG Thank You to Steve Goodtime & Brant Matthews who have created our Awesome jingle for the contests!

A BIG Thank You to Steve Goodtime & Brant Matthews who have created our Awesome jingle for the contests!

A BIG Thank You to Charlie for coming to the aid of the show and getting our contests all organized!

We also want to give a BIG Thank You to all the Developers for supporting our show with their plugin donations! Please be sure to check them out!

Short note about participating in the contests folks – we go to great efforts to get these licenses. We would LOVE to see a bit more participation from you, The Producers.

Visit http://WPPluginsAtoZ.com/contests for more info.

For all developers who would like to support the show. You can donate a premium license to be used in a future contest please go to WPPluginsAtoZ.com/PluginContest

The plugins we covered were:

John’s Plugins: Remove Footer Credit – 4, PDF Invoices & Packing Slips – 4, Halloween Countdown Widget – 5

Amber's Plugins: Download Button for Elementor – 1, Cut The Lights – 5, Crow's Nest Menu Navigation – 4

Matt's Famous Quotes
https://www.idrlabs.com/quotes/matt-mullenweg.php

Reminders / Commercial / Promotions:

Next Week:

Meetup Has Been Planned For June 25th!! Keep tabs on the date at: https://wppluginsatoz.com/meetup – keep an eye to make sure that the date doesn't change on you for any reason (like zombies or wet ninja cats being herded through catnip fields flooding the valley or anything..)

Would you like to be on an interview show? Simply connect at https://wppluginsatoz.com/interview

If you have suggestions on plugins you would like to have reviewed please submit them on the website at https://wppluginsatoz.com/submit-plugin-review/

Q & A Time with Amber ——– Catch this info on our YouTube Channel

If you have questions you would like to have asked on the show, send them in to me at Amber@WPPro.ca and we will answer to the best of our ability!

• What are the 3 most common mistakes a new to the scene web hoster tends to make?
  • How about a web developer?

• Was there a major mistake you made when you were first starting out that turned out to be a blessing?

• How would one go about getting their site noticed – what steps could they take to get themselves out into the world and land within the first 5 or so pages of the search engine results?
  • Will just setting up your SEO do that? Are there additional steps to go with SEO? Is there something you can do besides SEO to get picked up by the search engine spider bots?
• What are some common reasons people's sites wind up in the last few pages of results in search engines?

Closing out this Episode

Just some reminders:

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How to Contact Us:

John can be contacted at:

• on my website @ http://www.johnoverall.com/
• WordPress Emergency Support http://wppro.ca/wpemergency
• email: john@wppro.ca

Amber can be contacted at:

• email: amber@wppro.ca